For Tactual Globals:

This may be the largest group of young students you identify.

Emphasize this approach until the children feel comfortable with a specific vocabulary.

Then read stories together. Have them create their own stories by using the vocabulary with which they have become familiar.

Make up songs and poems with the vocabulary, but emphasize ideas.

Tactual globals have to feel comfortable with information before they are taxed. Three or four days of tactual resources emphasizing the same words should do before you begin the "reading" of the story that encompasses those words (the same words they have been "playing" with on the Electroboard and other hands-on manipulatives).

Don’t focus on alphabetical letters with this group until much later; don’t let reading become either a chore or threat. They must succeed with the tactual manipulatives before they begin to feel stress.

Once they recognize the words—and they’ll learn to do that through the tactual resources—and feel comfortable, they will succeed with the actual reading and recognition.

These children like to "play" and often have a short attention span when confronted with a "reading lesson" and a textbook. But wait until you see what happens when they can use the resources we suggest.

For Kinesthetic Analytics:

Start with body action, floor games dramatizations, assigning parts they need to memorize in a play (type their parts for them), singing stories, and a method we will suggest in the next issue.

Allow such youngsters to stand or sprawl while you are reading a story. These children cannot sit "still"; they don’t understand what you mean when you tell them to do that.

Don’t press them; instead, love them and encourage them.

Don’t force them to behave conventionally; instead, require that they complete their work, but permit them to do it as they feel comfortable.

Don’t call them "babyish"—they are not; they are the world’s young Peter Pans. They will learn, but very differently from the ways required by traditional teachers.

Don’t be just one kind of teacher; be what each child needs—a very special, loving human adult.

For Kinesthetic Globals:

All of the above for kinesthetics, except don’t give multiple directions to these children.

"Take out your crayons, find the red one, and hold it in your right hand" is too much at one time. Speak slowly and demonstrate everything you do. These children do not follow multiple, sequential steps; they feel life and survive holistically.

Require that their tasks be completed, but allow them to sit comfortably and where in the classroom they wish (as long as you can see them).

Permit them to work with another child or two, as long as they do their assignments and do them well. That is how many global people learn.

Emphasize acting, dramatizing, visits, trips, role playing, huge body action floor games, huge story books, huge tactual materials.

Laugh with these children; they need you to do that.

Questions and Conclusions

Do all children need love? Yes, but some need it more than others. More important, some want it more than others; some want it only on their terms and occasionally.

Can all children learn to read? I believe the answer is yes, but some need one method and others need another.

Can teachers use several different methods at the same time? Yes, but they need to be shown how to do that. However, until you do learn how to introduce to each group correctly, experiment with one of the following:

Ask a colleague to take one of your larger perceptual groups for one hour each day while, at the same time, you take one of her larger groups.

Each of you do with the entire class whatever is suggested for the larger group you have taken.

Follow that same pattern for six weeks and, if you don’t see phenomenal improvement/growth for the larger group to whose strengths you are responding, STOP! But I bet you do!

Ask that the classes on a single grade level reorganize for reading.

Assign each of the larger groups to specific teachers and "fill in" with the smallest groups. Watch what happens within six weeks. If the groups to which you are responding are not learning better than they ever have before, STOP!

Because reading is so important, do half an hour each day with each method described here, but start with the tactual/global approach, follow with the kinesthetic/global, then the visual global, and then use the other approaches (with the same words/concepts) as indicated.